Friday, June 9, 2017

Chancy D’Elia: A Greenwich Businesswoman Who Persevered

Olivia Luntz, guest blogger

It is with mixed emotions that we at the
Greenwich Oral History Project publish the last blog post by guest blogger,
Olivia Luntz, graduating Greenwich High School senior. Throughout this year and
last, Olivia has handed in impressive work, for which we are most grateful. While
we will miss Olivia, we are happy to wish her well as she continues on to
college this fall where she will join the freshman class at Amherst College. We
have no doubts that she will prove herself to be an estimable asset in no time.
Good luck, Olivia!

In keeping with
the celebration of the Greenwich Chamber of Commerce’s 150th anniversary, the
Greenwich Oral History Project is, from time to time, focusing on Greenwich
businesses. In this post we turn to Chancy D’Elia, who ran the Chancy D’Elia
clothing store on Greenwich Avenue, a true landmark, from 1932 until it closed
in 2005. D’Elia’s accomplishments are especially impressive when one considers
that women were rarely involved in business when she first opened her store,
and even though she faced obstacles, she did not give up but rather persevered
and was able to become one of the most successful businesswomen in Greenwich. The
interview, from our archives, was conducted in 1975, when her store was a
booming business.

D’Elia was born
in 1911 in Greenwich, after her parents immigrated from Italy several years
before. D’Elia attended the Havemeyer School and the high school on Mason
Street. After high school she enrolled in secretarial school and then went to
work as a secretary at the New England Carpet Cleaning Company. After working
there for a few years, D’Elia made a dramatic change in her life. “I was just
about twenty-one…and the thought came to me that I would like to start a little
business, and then my uncle, A. V. Salvatore, who was a furrier and fine
tailoring shop on Greenwich Avenue, had also a little store called Snappy
Cleaners, and I asked him, one day could I put in a few ready-to-wear things.
And he was reluctant, you know, for a while, and then I kept teasing him. He
said, ‘All right.’ So I did.”

D’Elia's next
step was to acquire clothes for her budding business. She recounts how “On
February 13, 1932, I went to New York with my sister with $270 in the bank; we
bought a few skirts, dresses, and sweaters. In those days, you know, you could
buy your skirt for about $2.50. You could buy a dress for about $3.75,
inexpensive clothes.” D’Elia ended up purchasing “a few sweaters, skirts, and
about eight or ten dresses” and put all of her clothes in the front section of
Snappy Cleaners. D’Elia observes that it only “takes … one person to get you
started,” and for her that one person was Hope Tyson, who bought most of the
clothes D’Elia had originally picked out for the store. Along with Mrs. Tyson,
Mrs. Meany, the wife of golfer Bill Meany, also became a regular customer.
D’Elia recounts their first interaction: “She had come into this little Snappy
Cleaners dressed with furs from the top of her head down to her feet, and she
said, ‘I’m married to Bill,’ and she said, ‘He loves to play golf, and he wants
me to play golf.’ She said, ‘So, what do you have for me?’ So she just shed all
her clothes right then and there. She put on a skirt and a top, and from then
on she was another wonderful customer.”

Along with the
luck she had in acquiring such loyal customers, D’Elia also had quite a bit of
luck when it came to buying the clothes for her store. She relates how “every
time you went into a wholesale house, they would ask again, ‘Are you rated?’ I
said, ‘No.’ And it was a strange feeling because you couldn’t buy anything; you
had to be rated before they’d sell to you….So I was borrowing from the tailor
in the beginning. I was borrowing from the presser, everyone. The things would
be coming C.O.D.”. About two years into running her store D'Elia attempted to
go to a credit house in New York City to become established, but, she says,
“Nothing came of it. I think he must have had a hearty laugh after we left. He
just must have torn the application right up.” However, she had a stroke of
luck when she went to Boeppler Sportswear’s wholesale house. “He [the owner]
said to me, ‘Chancy,’ he said, ‘I’m going to give you credit on your face
value.’” Her lucky streak continued at another wholesale house, called Harry
Segal. According to D’Elia, “He had beautiful sweaters, and I was able at times
to buy some sweaters off price. There were two brothers, Harry and Dave Segal,
and they liked us. They knew that we [D'Elia and her sister] were perfectly
innocent kids and they wanted to help us, and they started extending credit.
They were both extending me credit, so when they asked me about the rating, I
would say, ‘Reference would be so-and-so,’ and that way, between the C.O.D.’s
and everything else, I was able to get established.”

Thanks to the
help she received from businessmen who believed in her, after about four years
of operating her store out of Snappy Cleaners, D’Elia had enough money and
enough merchandise to move into her own store, which happened to be right next
to her uncle’s own furs and tailoring store. She described it as “a perfect
move.” After staying in this store for another eight years, the owner of the
building informed D’Elia that he needed the building back and that her store
would have to more elsewhere. Fortunately, her uncle, A. V. Salvatore, was
selling his building next door. “The Salvatore Building was an old, old
building. It was the Red Cross Building at the time, about 1890 to early
1990’s….In the meantime, he’s torn this building down and put up a new
building, and he said to me at the time, he said, ‘I’m going to sell my
building.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘you are?’ So he said, ‘I want $65,000 for it.’ And I
said, ‘Oh, $65,000.’ That was back quite a few years, and I wrote to my husband
right away again (who was in the Army Transport Command during World War II)….We
naturally negotiated, and we bought the building in January of 1945.” Buying
this building was a huge step for D’Elia and her store, and she was thankful
she did decide to buy, as her store was able to remain in this same location
for the next sixty years.

D’Elia explains
that her business occupied a niche market in Greenwich. “We had no competition
really here, none.” Although she remembers other clothing stores, such as
“Frances Clark, The Shirley Shoppe…[and] Favorite Shoe, Finch’s, Boswell’s,”
she asserts that her store was the only one “that was just for Greenwich
women.” Her store also went through many evolutions. Of the first location, she
recalls, “it was mostly sportswear in the bank building. We more or less
catered to the juniors, to high school and college girls.” She adds, “Mothers
used to come in with their daughters, get them ready for college, selecting
their wardrobes. They had their lists with them, and they start from scratch
all the way out.” However, when teen’s styles and buying habits started to
change, D’Elia took her business in a new direction. She did not label what her
store then carried as “mature” but rather as “ageless.”

She admits she
always had good judgment with what to buy and knowing what her customers would
want. “Well, usually a buyer had a limit to what, you know, they had the
regular form that they go by. You buy so much of this; you buy so much of that.
I never had, always, a free hand. I never cared what I spent. I just went in
and bought it. We had so many sweaters one time that we supplied practically
the whole town.” She continues, “I’m a wild buyer. Always took a chance, never
hesitated. Even now, I do that now. I don’t stop. If I think something is good,
I’ll go right ahead and buy it.” However, the ever-changing trends in women’s
fashion kept D’Elia on her toes. “There have been so many changes,” she says, “from
the Chanel look” on. “In fact, one year when the skirts dropped way down—they
went to your ankles—that time we had taken a beating, such a beating. We
couldn’t sell what we had in stock. I just took the whole mess of them, and I
had a nun, a cousin in Italy, and she was with the orphanage, and I packed them
all and sent them to her and, of course, I received so many blessings from
them.”

Still at the helm
when this interview was conducted, D’Elia proudly asserts, “I buy everything
that comes in the store. I buy everything, and I go to the New York market in
seasons—spring, summer, fall, resort, holiday….For instance, in the wintertime,
I go in for about a week to ten days, every day. Then I go in maybe once every
month, and then we have many salesmen come in here, many, many salesmen….Sometimes
we have them standing out there, four and five deep, all day long….That saves me
a trip into New York.” Although by that time, D’Elia acknowledges, there was a
lot of competition in Greenwich and the surrounding towns. Even so, she does
not believe these stores affected her business, as by now she had customers who
had been with her for decades. Along with the success of her business, D’Elia’s
reputation as a respected business owner was also confirmed when she was
appointed in 1972 as an associate director of the State National Bank, the
second oldest bank in America. Noting that she was the only woman on the board,
D’Elia describes the position as “quite an honor.”

Site of original Chancy D'Elia store, recently shuttered, making way for yet another retail business.(Photo courtesy of Leslie Yager, Greenwich Free Press)

Overall, D’Elia stresses throughout her interview, the importance
of having a good community that can help lead the way to success. She
acknowledges the help of two of her four sisters who were highly involved with
her in the store, stating, “but without my sisters, without my girls, without
my customers, nothing would have been possible. It would not have been
possible. You can’t do a thing alone. Impossible to do it alone.” She also
points out the special relationship she had with her customers, “I call them my
friends because I just love them. They’ve known me for so long, and there’s
such an affection, and they want to be greeted. Put their arms around you, and
listen to their little tales and their little problems. You have to listen to
them, and there’s always time for it. Once in awhile a customer will come in
and say, ‘Oh, I saw you back there, but you were so busy.’ I’m never too busy
to say hello and speak to you, never. I find that’s so important really, and I
always say to the girls when a person walks in that door, they have chosen this
shop to shop in. They deserve every courtesy extended to them, every courtesy.
That’s so important to me. I’d turn myself inside out for them.”

One can conclude that D’Elia’s success as a businesswoman, despite
her early challenges and obstacles, was due not only to her perseverance and
savvy, but also due to her philosophy that “you should work for the fun of it
no matter what it is….And the money will come later… .Everything in life is enthusiasm.”

Chancy
D’elia’s interview, “Chancy’s Background and Business,” conducted by Nancy
Wolcott, July 31, 1975, can be read in the first floor reference area of the
library or in the Oral History Project office on the lower level of the
library.